


Care

by rev02a



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25248652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rev02a/pseuds/rev02a
Summary: Terry Ganes was taken into the foster system on a Thursday. If only Ianto and Rhiannon were so lucky.Reposted from my LiveJournal from 2010
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	Care

Terry Ganes was taken into the foster system on a Thursday. His dad had left long before Ianto had even known him and everybody knew that his mum had heavy fists. Not that it was uncommon on the estate, but nobody would ever talk about it.

Terry’s black eyes and broken wrists, however, were hard to deny. So somebody intervened.

Ianto sat on his cement stoop and watched Terry, with a packed rucksack, climb into the backseat of an unmarked blue sedan. And then Terry left the estate forever.

He walked slowly into the house. His dad snored drunkenly from the ragged couch and didn’t wake as Ianto shuffled past. Rhiannon was at the kitchen table glaring at her maths homework. Ianto looked over his sister’s shoulder at her homework. The answer was obviously negative seventeen, but Ianto didn’t tell her that.

He slid into the seat beside her and looked across the worn table. His mother was perched on her seat staring unseeingly at a needle and thread. Her hand was clenched around the thread and there was no way that she would be able to manipulate it into needle. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to anyway—she was frozen again.

“Mam?” he asked, looking for her to blink or twitch. She did that sometimes before she unfroze.

“She can’t help,” his sister growled, tapping the tabletop with her rubber.

Ianto looked at Rhiannon’s homework and sighed. His sister was stupid. “You did that wrong.”

She snarled and threw her pencil down. “I hate maths, they’re stupid!”

Ianto shrugged. “Terry went into care today.”

Rhiannon licked her lip. It was split, but they didn’t talk about that much. “Lucky.”

Ianto watched his mother. She was still like a stone. The needle and thread didn’t so much was waver in her grasp. He wondered how she held so still. He could never stay that still.

He walked to the backdoor and retrieved his rucksack. “I have to read,” he announced to his sister.

Rhiannon nodded at him. “I’ll help you.”

Ianto set his reading folder next to her maths sheet. “I’ll help with your sums.”

And they sat down and diligently worked. Rhiannon could not accept that a negative and a negative was a positive to Ianto’s annoyance.

“It doesn’t make sense;” she growled, tapping her pencil in aggravation, “two nothings don’t make something.”

Then, the spell was broken, and their mother turned across the table to face them both.

“Think of it this way, Rhia,” she said, her voice like honeyed candy, “the negative signs cancel out.”

And she began a long explanation that left both children hanging on her words. How they adored their sweet, gentle mother. She had a way with words that helped them understand that hardest things—even heavy hands.

She pierced the top of the thread spool with her needle and stood. “I best start dinner. How are those spelling words coming, Ianto?”

Ianto grimaced. “I don’t like copying those words.”

His mother opened the refrigerator and stared at the empty shelves. “Yes, but you have to know how to spell them or Ms. Tibble will call again. You are too clever to not know how to spell.”

“Mam,” Rhiannon said softly, which made her mother turn to face her, “Mrs. Ganes down the street hit Terry so hard that he went into care today.”

Ianto saw his mother clench a fist around the handle on the refrigerator. “Is that so?”

“Stacey says kids in care get always have meals,” she continued quietly, “and they get tutored and…”

“And, what, Rhiannon?”

“Nobody hits them.”

Their mother nodded and stared sightlessly at the far wall. “I never wanted this life.” And she shut down.

Ianto didn’t copy his spelling words, but he did stand and unclench his mother’s hand from the ‘fridge door. Even if it was empty, it was letting the cool out.

“Wanna go to the shop?” he asked his sister.

They ran down the street and out of the estate. Rhiannon refused to step on any crack in the concrete, so she jumped and hopped along behind him. Ianto’s legs were shorter, but he led them to “JONES AND SONS, A GENTLEMAN’S TAILOR” shop at top speed.

The bell above the door dinged with delight as they pushed their way into the shop. It smelled of fabric and tobacco. There were rows of wools and corduroy to touch as they walked to the counter. Rhiannon stopped to make faces in the three-fold mirror.

Their Taid was tall and trim, and barely looked his age. Ianto was young, but he wasn’t stupid. The boys on the playground had it right—he looked like his grandfather, not like his father. Their eyes matched, just like their cheekbones. Maybe his Taid loved his mother once, before she started freezing. Ianto doubted that his father ever loved his mother, even if Rhiannon was their flesh and blood.

Ianto slammed into the counter with a grin. “Taid!”

“Ianto, my boy!” the older man exclaimed, hurrying around the counter to swing Ianto up into his arms. This, for Ianto, was the biggest clue to his parentage. “Is your sister with you?”

“Here I am, Taid!” Rhiannon squealed, and ran for a hug as well. Ianto was set on the counter, with his legs swinging, as Rhiannon was embraced.

It wasn’t the same sort of hug.

“What has brought you two clever children to see this old man?”

“Terry Ganes got taken into care today; his mum broke his wrist again,” Rhiannon recited, looking jealous.

“Mam froze up. And there’s nothing for tea,” Ianto added, frustrated.

Rhiannon glared at him. “There’s nothing wrong, Mam will fix it.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. His stomach growled. His Taid closed his eyes slowly before helping Ianto off the counter. “Best go scrounge up some tea then, shall we?”

Ianto straightened his back. “I can stay here in the shop and mind the till.”

“Ah, no, lad, I best get you home,” his grandfather replied.

Ianto shifted his weight, “I could sweep up.”

There was no further argument, however, they were soon packed into Taid’s old Rover and back on the estate.

They went in the front door, but Ianto hung back. The tailor shop was magic, but home, well its magic was more occult worthy. Magically freezing mothers, and bumbling fathers who changed moods like some people changed hats. Taid stopped in the doorway and watched Ianto.

“Best come in, son,” he said, and Ianto wished they would stop this charade in front of others. He wished he could really be this man’s son.

The house was full of shadows. In the kitchen, Ianto heard his father screaming at his mother. He heard him strike her, and she screamed obscenities in return. Taid ran into the kitchen, but Ianto sank down into the corner next to the front door.

He would never go into care, he knew. Terry Ganes had no one to run to when things got this rough, but Rhiannon and he had Taid, so no one would stop this madness. Some nights, he dreamed that his teachers questioned how he broke his leg on the swings and why Rhiannon had no dinner at school. He wished that someone would force their grandfather to raise them.

He closed his eyes and wished the raised voices away. Snatches of their words haunted him, worse than any nightmare.

“You, useless bitch! Whoring yourself out to my father!”

“Bryan! Enough! That’s your wife!”

“Stop! Stop! Please! The children are home! Please!”

Ianto could open the door and escape outside. He could slip into his Taid’s backseat and lie on the floor. Taid might not see him until he got home or back to the shop. It would be too much hassle to drive back to the estate, so Ianto would just sleep on the couch. It would be like being in care. No empty bellies, no flying fists, and no screamed insults.

Not all the estate was like this. There was the other family of the Jones who lived three rows over. They had two daughters who never had bruises. They had parents who worked hard and always walked them to school. Ianto had once heard the phrase “keeping up with the Jones,” and he had known which of the Jones families would be worth comparing oneself to. It certainly wasn’t his.

Taid stormed out of the kitchen toward the front door. His son chased after him.

“Stay the fuck out of my house!”

Taid ruffled Ianto’s hair as he opened the door. Ianto clamped his mouth shut to keep the begging inside.

“Be good, Ianto.”

“Yes, sir,” Ianto replied, as the door closed.

  
...

When Ianto was in year five, Taid died of a heart attack. His son Bryan sold the shop.

Ianto cried.

Bryan glared at Ianto, “Just like him, aren’t you?”

Ianto never denied it.

...

After Taid’s death, Ianto’s mother’s freezing attacks became more frequent. The NHS gave her a special room in Providence Park. She died in the same special room not long after.

Ianto didn’t cry.

Instead, he began to fervently wish that someone would put him into foster care. When it became apparent that no one cared about too skinny, thirteen-year-old boys, Ianto shut down.

He did his studies half-heartedly. He read escapist literature. He learned to hack public websites. He nicked candy bars.

He only got caught once, the same night that his sister told his father that she was pregnant with Johnny Davies’ baby.

It didn’t really matter.

The baby boy was small and red. Rhiannon handed her blanked-wrapped son to her little brother and all Ianto could think was how stupid his sister was. She would never get off the estate now.

...

Bryan Jones struck a light pole in May. He’d gotten a drink driving ticket a few blocks back, but decided to reclaim his car anyway. The paramedics reported that he had died on impact.

Johnny, holding his son, looked blankly at the coffin. Ianto wondered if he really wanted to have a son and a wife, or if Rhiannon had just pushed him into it. Then Ianto packed a bag and hitchhiked to London. He didn’t look back.

...

Jack propped his boots up on his desk and leaned back in his desk chair. The chair groaned.

Ianto entered the room, reading a file. “Iaoffs, sir,” he began, “hibernate when placed in direct contact with infrared light.”

“Good work,” Jack exclaimed, eyeing Ianto’s dark-circled eyes and tired slouch, “we’ll deal with it in the morning, then!”

Ianto looked confused, “In the morning, sir?”

Jack nodded decisively, and dropped his feet to the floor, “Yes, they aren’t hurting anyone, just burrowing in their gardens. It will keep until daylight.”

Ianto laid the file on Jack’s desk and crossed his arms. “Of course.”

“Ianto Jones!” Jack proclaimed, rocking in his chair and then jumping to his feet. “Time for a meal and a long bath!” 

Ianto smiled grimly. “I’ll leave you to it then, sir. Good night.”

Jack grabbed Ianto by the arm and tugged him into his embrace. “I meant that it’s time for me to take care of you.”

And so, at the age of 24, Ianto Jones went into care.


End file.
